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Saturday, August 21, 2010

This was a fun little exercise: two paintings of the same subject ... one traditional; one digital.

I painted the traditional one last week as a demo for the Art Department at PDI (aka, Pacific Data Images, which is DreamWorks Animation's sister facility in the San Francisco Bay-Area.)

I was asked to demonstrate how I paint traditionally...specifically my matte painting/illustration technique. Something I haven't done in almost 10 years! Needless to say I was a little nervous. Let's face it...it's hard enough to make a good looking painting on a good day. But to do it when you're out of practice...in front of an audience... Nerve wracking.

Originally, they asked me do a plien air (outdoor) painting demo. But as my traditional technique is definitely an indoor studio technique, I opted for a compromise: an indoor plein air painting. So I brought up a landscape image on a big plasma screen, and did a plein air painting from that. I figured, if you can't bring the studio to the mountain...bring the mountain to the studio!

I would be lying if I said it went off without a hitch. As I said, it's been almost 10 years since I've painted this way, and it was an uphill slog the entire way. But I'm a professional, so I stuck it out! I actually think it made for a better demo than if it went smoothly.

Anyway, for what it's worth, the paintings below are the result. The top one is the actual acrylic painting I did for the demo. The one below, was a warm-up painting I did digitally on my Cintiq.

Both are based on a beautiful photo I found on the web (I couldn't find the photographer's name, but it came from a flickr page called "Winky in the UK". Thanks Winky...awesome photo!)

Oh...and a big howdy to the PDI Art Dept gang! Thanks for having me up there. I had a great time, and I hope you all enjoyed watching me sweat this one out! (^-^)